Bitcoin price hits all-time high of $269

The price of one Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $269 on Wednesday, surpassing the previous record of $267 set in April 2013. Mt. Gox, one of the largest and most well-known sites for exchanging bitcoins with US dollars, reported the record high at 5:40am GMT. Bitcoin has been steadily increasing in value over the past month, after a long period of relative stability for the highly volatile crypto-currency. At the beginning of October, one BTC was worth $145. The closure on 2 October of the Silk Road website , which reportedly represented up to 5% of the bitcoin economy, caused a short-term crash in prices, but the currency soon recovered. Since then it has been on a rapid increase, at one point rising by 14% in a single day. Users and observers of the crypto-currency have many theories about why the increase may have occurred. Some point to the closure of the Silk Roa...